Steve Trevor holds the distinction of being the first foreigner to have ever set foot on Themyscira, the first manDiana has ever seen, and the first ambassador to open diplomatic relations with the Amazonian people. He is often a primary love interest; their relationship was often flirtatious, yet they always remained steadfast friends. On occasion, Marston would place Trevor in inverted "damsel-in-distress" situations, which humorously serves as fodder for Diana's heroics. His marriage proposals were often rejected, as she prioritized saving the world first before marriage.[1][2][3]

As originally introduced, Steve Trevor was a U.S. military intelligence officer in the US Army Air Corps who became stranded on Wonder Woman's homeland and developed a close relationship with the heroine. Though a military man with experience in the field, storylines involving post-Marston Steve and Wonder Woman typically involved inversions of the damsel in distress trope, with Wonder Woman coming to Steve's rescue. Steve's visibility in comics varied through the 1970s to the 1990s, with his character either absent or sidelined in favour of fantasy and action-adventure Wonder Woman stories without romantic interests. In more recent portrayals, and particularly since DC's 2011 reboot, Steve is portrayed as a senior government agent and super spy whose close connection to Wonder Woman makes him the United States' liaison to the Justice League. In 2013, in his capacity as a skilled government agent, Steve himself became the member of a new incarnation of the Justice League of America.

In the original version of Wonder Woman's origin story, Steve Trevor was an intelligence officer in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II whose plane crashed on Paradise Island, the isolated homeland of the Amazons. He was nursed back to health by the Amazon princess Diana, who fell in love with him and accompanied him when he returned to the outside world. There she became Wonder Woman (and also his coworker, Diana Prince).

Steve Trevor, modeled from the Orion archetype, was portrayed as a blond American military hero who often fought battles both alone and alongside Wonder Woman. At the same time, he was also a traditional superhero's love interest and gentleman-in-jeopardy: getting kidnapped and requiring rescuing from peril by Wonder Woman, as well as pining after the superheroine in the red-and-blue outfit while failing to notice her resemblance to his meek, bespectacled co-worker Diana Prince. But he also rescued Wonder Woman at times.

The reason Steve was made blond stems from William Moulton Marston's theory that the best romantic combo is a blue-eyed brunette girl to a light-haired man. He asserted that blond males tend to be more submissive to brunette females.

After Marston's death, much of the original supporting cast had less attention paid to them. Under writer-editor Robert Kanigher, both his and Diana's personalities were compromised considerably, with Steve beginning to seem threatened by his heroine's power, and with Diana almost beginning to seem apologetic about it. As with Superman stories of the same period, the question of marriage was never far from the couple's minds. There was also considerable attention given to the threat of the Amazon's secret identity being revealed.

Wonder Woman often found herself agreeing to Steve's contests for her hand in marriage, which he typically cheated at using government tracking equipment. Afraid that she loved someone else; Steve once again misused government spying equipment to stalk Wonder Woman, finding her with her childhood boyfriend Mer-Man; whom he felt the need to prove himself better than.[4]

In 1968, Diana chose to give up her powers and cut ties with her native Paradise Island to stay close to Steve. Trevor was killed off in the next issue. He was thus absent for the next few years of the comic. In the mid-1970s, following the return of the heroine's powers, Trevor was brought back to life by Aphrodite, and given a new identity as the brunette Steve Howard. In 1978, he was killed off again. He would be replaced in 1980 by a double from another, undisclosed dimension of the Multiverse. For the next few years the classic relationship of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor would be essentially restored, and explored with some detail. In 1985 with issue # 322, writer Dan Mishkin dealt with Trevor's three separate "lives," and after much explanation merged the "new" Steve with the old.

During this same period in early 1980s issues of Wonder Woman, the villainous Doctor Psycho fused Steve's image with Wonder Woman's abilities and became "Captain Wonder," sporting a costume similar to Wonder Woman's. In the final issue of the original Wonder Woman series, Steve and Diana get married.

At the end of the series, the Wonder Woman and retired four-star General Steve Trevor of pre-Crisis Earth-Two traveled to Mount Olympus to live with the Greek gods and goddesses, as many of the other pre-Crisis Earth-Two heroes died or merged into a new streamlined continuity. The Wonder Woman of pre-Crisis Earth-One was devolved back into the mystical clay from which she was formed (technically dying), thus allowing Wonder Woman and her supporting characters to be re-introduced with new origins, backgrounds and plotlines.

With the restart of the series in the second volume after the Crisis on Infinite Earths series, Steve Trevor was revamped to be considerably older than Diana. In addition, the two of them never had a romantic relationship. Years before Trevor's crash landing on Themyscira (the modern name for Paradise Island), his lost mother, Diana Rockwell Trevor, a pilot for the Women Airforce Service Pilots, had also crashed there, finding the Amazons battling a large monster. Seeing they were close to defeat, Diana Trevor used her pistol on the beast, giving the Amazons an advantage in the battle. Trevor dies as a result. After her death the Amazons considered the outworlder to be an honored hero for her sacrifice. It is from her that Queen Hippolyta named her daughter Diana and also from her that the Amazons came into possession of a gun originating from Man's World. It's this familial link that led to the god Ares to manipulate Steve into bombing Themyscira to eliminate the Amazons. However while in flight and guided to the island, Trevor realized he was about to needlessly bomb civilians and attempted to abort the mission. Steve's co-pilot, a minion of the war-god, transforms into a monster in an attempt to continue the attack. Diana rescues Steve from the resulting disaster.

Bringing the unconscious Trevor to the island, Diana recognized his American flag insignia on his uniform mirrored her own armor's color motif and took this as a sign of where she had to go to begin her fight against Ares. Thus inspired, Diana took Trevor to 'Man's World' in the city of Boston and began her calling. Since then, Trevor and Diana have been close friends despite him being old enough to be her father. This version of Steve Trevor went on to marry Etta Candy and became the Deputy Secretary of Defense for the U.S. government.

Following the Infinite Crisis limited series, Wonder Woman's origin was yet again revamped, as was her supporting cast. Diana is no longer a recent arrival to man's world, but instead has been around for a considerable time, having been involved in the creation of the Justice League of America (as was the case in the group's Silver Age introductory story in 1960). Although Steve still remains close friends with Diana and married to Etta, his history with Diana has not fully been developed.

In the aftermath of the Flashpoint storyline, history is rewritten. In a conversation between Steve Trevor and Amanda Waller five years ago, Steve tries to convince Waller that Diana and the Amazons are not a threat to global security, as they are benevolent.[5] Steve then becomes Wonder Woman's U.N. liaison during her stay in Washington, D.C.[6] and later becomes the head of the newly formed A.R.G.U.S., (Advanced Research Group for Uniting Super-Humans), as well as the UN's liaison to the newly formed Justice League. Promoted to the rank of Colonel, his assistant is Etta Candy and he has made his feelings and attraction to Wonder Woman clear to her, although his feelings were not reciprocated.[7] The hero Black Orchid is revealed to be A.R.G.U.S. Agent Alba Garcia, working covertly for Justice League Dark to monitor John Constantine.[8]

Steve is also a member of several team books, including Team 7, which launched in September 2012, and Justice League of America, launched in 2013.

In Convergence, versions of Steve, Diana and Etta Candy from before Crisis on Infinite Earths work to better the fate of Earth One's Gotham City while stuck under an alien dome for a year. When vampiric versions of Gotham criminals from Earth-43 invade a makeshift church service, it is up to Diana and Steve to keep them from spilling out into the streets. Steve falls prey to the vampires, arising as one of them. However, he manages to maintain his own free will, taking down a vampire and falling under the rubble of the collapsing church.[9]

In the Year One storyline that retells Wonder Woman's origin, Steve crashes on the island of Themyscira and is the only survivor. He is saved and nursed back to health by the Amazons, and a competition is held to determine the one to take Steve and the bodies of his fallen comrades back to America. Diana is the winner and they journey in an invisible plane back to America, where Diana is detained for a while because of her unknown origins. Steve, however, vouches for her and she is eventually released to explore a mall. He aids Diana in defeating a group of terrorists who attack random pedestrians.

In the "Lies" story arc set years later Steve is part of a group of soldiers are sent to track down the cult of Urzkartaga and Andres Cadulo, who has abducted a group of young African villagers. Steve is taken prisoner by Cadulo and is nearly sacrificed to the god Urzkartaga until Wonder Woman intervenes, saving him and causing the god to turn into a plant. They return to America where Steve and Diana reconnect. Barbara Ann Minerva (freed from her curse as the Cheetah because of Urzkartaga's defeat) discovers a way to locate Paradise Island and Steve accompanies Diana there, where they are seemingly greeted by the Amazons. However, Steve notices many inconsistencies with what he remembers: the Amazons look unfamiliar, their society is different, and they all speak English despite having been presented as having their own language. Wonder Woman realizes this is because everything she thought she knew was a lie: the price for leaving the island with Steve years before was to renounce going back. Wonder Woman has not been back to the island since then.

In the alternate timeline of the Flashpoint event, Steve and Wonder Woman have no relationship; instead, it appears that he is in love with Lois Lane. Steve made an appearance in London where he is waiting at a rendezvous point for Lois Lane as he is attacked by Wonder Woman and the Amazons. Wonder Woman catches him by the neck with her Lasso of Truth and begins interrogating him after he is temporarily able to resist the lasso's effects. He explains that he was hired to extract Lois Lane from New Themyscira because she was sent to gather information on the Amazons for Cyborg who's amassing superhumans to stop the fighting between Wonder Woman and Aquaman. Steve's fate remains unrevealed, as a subject of Wonder Woman asked her what to do with him.[14]

Steve Trevor appears as a major supporting character in this alternate re-telling of Wonder Woman's origin. Similar to Marston's original comics, the young pilot Steve Trevor crash landed on Paradise Island.[16]

In the Wonder Womantelevision series, there were two Steve Trevors (father & son), both played by Lyle Waggoner. Both Trevors worked and fought alongside Wonder Woman and have the middle name Leonard, not Rockwell. Steve Trevor Sr. was in the 1st Season during World War II in the 1940s where he helped Wonder Woman fight the threats of the Nazis. Steve Trevor Jr. was in Seasons 2-3 during the 1970s where he and his new associate Diana Prince shared a secretary named Beverly Ryan (played by Brooke Bundy in "The Return of Wonder Woman").

In Justice League, Steve Trevor appears in the three part story, "The Savage Time" voiced by Patrick Duffy. Here, Trevor is a secret agent for the Allies whom Wonder Woman rescues from a plane crash at the time when the Justice League went back in time to prevent Vandal Savage from changing history so that World War II was won by the Axis powers. The two have a brief, flirtatious relationship that remains as a friendship in the present day where Trevor is now decades the superheroine's senior. Trevor calls Wonder Woman by the nickname "Angel". This is similar to the Golden Age version of the character who often referred to Diana as the "angel" who rescued him from the plane crash.

Steve Trevor appears in two Batman: The Brave and the Bold episodes. In "Scorn of the Star Sapphire," Trevor (voiced by Sean Donnellan) appears in a pre-credits scene in which Wonder Woman saves him and Batman from a villainess. In "Triumvirate of Terror", he has a non-speaking cameo.

Steve Trevor appears in the animated direct-to-DVD Wonder Woman film voiced by Nathan Fillion. His full name is Steven Rockwell Trevor. He calls Diana "angel" similar to his DCAU counterpart. He is a US Air ForceColonel (Call sign of "Zipper"), that crash-landed on Paradise Island, and is accompanied by Diana to the outside world, similar to his Golden Age counterpart.

Steve Trevor appears in Justice League: War voiced by George Newbern. Similar to his New 52 counterpart, he is the U.S. government's liaison to Wonder Woman and later a government liaison to the Justice League.